1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to a ligature or reed holding device for a reed instrument and more specifically to a reusable adjustable ligature that may be adjusted for multiple reed instruments.
2. Description of the Related Art
Wind instruments such as the clarinet and saxophone use a mouthpiece that affixes a reed that is free to vibrate and thereby produce a resonating sound. In conventional mouthpieces, the reed is affixed to the mouthpiece by means of a ligature, commonly of the split ring type, whose variety of designs may be exemplified with reference to U.S. Pat. Nos. D390,249; 1,449,868; 4,596,175; and 5,289,753, among others. U.S. Pat. No. 5,289,753 includes a good discussion of related art split ring ligatures. Although all of these devices function to affix a reed to a mouthpiece, it is readily apparent that for each differing mouthpiece, one specific complete ligature must be sized and mounted on each different mouthpiece. In other words, there is little or no interchangability for ligatures of the related art, especially when it comes to different size mouthpieces.
Accordingly, it would be desirable if one universal split ring ligature could be versatile enough to fit differing sized mouthpieces. It would further be desirable if the universal ligature affixed the reed to the mouthpieces with the minimum of surface area and compressive forces necessary to enhance the tone quality produced by the vibrating reed.